


missing words

by keeplovinanyway



Series: the beat goes on and on and on and on (Songfic series) [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Dan thinks a lot, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Positive ending, Songfic, Wir sind Helden - Freeform, phil helps a bit but that's not the main point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 18:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13909818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeplovinanyway/pseuds/keeplovinanyway
Summary: Dan thinks and he thinks and he thinks, and his words quite don't fit what's on the inside. He doesn't really have terms for what he feels and people misunderstand what he tries to say and sometimes, he just wants to point at the world and for that to be enough.





	missing words

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfiction inspired by two things:  
> 1\. The song [Stiller by Wir sind Helden](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAIpdl7zPV0). I translated the text for you [here](https://we-are-inimitable.tumblr.com/post/171667264425/stiller-quieter-wir-sind-helden).  
> 2\. [Dan's video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90HDPSz3ldU) about being true to himself, the [liveshow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QB4hypsMVI) that followed and the subsequent fandom reaction

Dan’s entire world has always been words.

“Can’t you just stop talking for a _minute_ ,” his mom used to tell him all of the time.

“Daniel, quiet now!”, the teachers told him in school.

Then he got older, and he said less, but thought maybe even more. His words became fitful attempts at poetry, hours worth of conversation and rants inside his own mind, or whiny diary entries.

When he realized that the world made very little sense him, all he had were wikipedia entries and forums and his thoughts. Over and over and over again his thoughts, and the words in his mind that he used to construct a bit of meaning where it felt like there was none.

So, for as long as Dan can think, he’s always relied on words.

Which is why nothing hurts more than when they fail him.

Or he fails them, maybe, or he’s a failure, and he doesn’t know, all he knows is that he can’t explain his mind well enough and that there’s never a greater fear he had than that one of being misunderstood.

~~

The thing with the video was, it had fucking mattered to him. It had. He’d spent months thinking about it, somewhere foggy in his own mind, and taken tentative steps towards it until he had been able to see it as something clearer. And it had been right. It had been meaningful and entertaining and personal. All of the things, all of the things that mattered.

He’d felt it somewhere deep inside that it was _true_. The past few months had been hard for him and he hates to admit that. But he’d gotten lost inside his mind again, trying to figure out some meaning, something big and important to keep him going – to keep him getting up from that futon, something to strive for. Something that mattered to him, in this world.

“We’re going to look at some pleasant activities that you can incorporate into your life. What makes you happy, Daniel?”, his therapist had said. His words had failed him then for a while, as he’d tried to explain his mind when his thoughts had been fuzzy and indistinct, until he’d realized that, no, he didn’t particularly know what made him happy.

But he’d researched it, hadn’t he. He’d read and thought and talked to Phil and read again, so much, at 2 am on some fucking article or another on the internet about how to become truly happy.

 _Happiness can be found when you are your true self,_ he’d read, and then a new cycle had begun of trying to make sense of that particular phrase. He’d cut it apart into little pieces, looked at them all individually and tried to connect invisible points with lines he could reach, something tangible and real for him to understand.

 _Is this happiness_ , he’d asked himself at everything that happened. When he laughed at a video, _is this happiness?_ When he was on a walk and some sort of calmness resided inside his chest where it normally didn’t, was that happiness? What was that feeling he had as he slid into freshly washed sheets? When he met a viewer on the street his insides jittered with anxiousness, but there was also a sense of fulfillment next to it, and Dan tried to make sense of that. What were the words for all of those things? The warm bubbling in his stomach when he laughed, that was good, wasn’t it? Chocolate made him feel nice, but maybe that was just the artificial hormones. Did they count? When he and Phil had sex, that was when his mind was calm and he felt at peace and something bodily, something deeply satisfied and content made him feel- alive, he supposed. Was that happy? How would one even know what happy meant? It was just a word, wasn’t it?

“What does happiness feel like to you?”, he’d murmured at Phil in the dark of their bedroom. Phil had slotted himself against Dan, thrown an arm across his middle and rested his chin on Dan’s curls.

“This. Sleep.”

“Shut up. Like. What does it _feel_ like?”

But Phil had only let out a contented hum and then his breaths had evened out.

It had helped, in it’s own way, Dan supposes. For a moment, he had appreciated what was there – but then his thoughts had started again. As soon as he thought he had grasped something that was inside of him, it was like the thing itself had changed its shape and suddenly didn’t fit the word anymore that had been perfect just a second ago.

He held those words close anyway, because they were the closest he’d ever gotten to the real thing.

~~

It had been a few weeks then, and something felt… okay. Something felt like it made sense. He got up in the mornings (mostly), and he did those things that he decided made him happy, and they consistently lead to some sort of feeling that was better than the others.

He kept thinking about it all though, about the thing with being true to yourself. He wrote essays and essays on it, all things that could possibly be scripts but never were.

“Do you want to go to the cinema,” Phil asked at one point, and Dan spent an hour spiraling away from himself as he tried to figure out if he really, truly wanted that.

They had gone in the end, in the gentle but persistent way with which Phil sometimes just made things happen, and Dan supposes it had been good. Happy, maybe. Truly in himself, hopefully.

When he had been a child, things had been easier, and then they hadn’t. Because he suddenly needed to talk less, or study more, or do something responsible for once Daniel, can you not just make an effort! You’re not some lazy- you’re not lazy, are you?

And he didn’t know, maybe he was lazy, but he tried not to be, because it didn’t seem nice.

People told him he was gay later then, spat it at him on the playground or typed it into chats online, and Dan denied and denied and denied as he frightedly grasped at the bit of truth that he believed. It was the bit of truth of another word he had chosen and that made it maybe a bit more okay to call them all liars.

Unless in the bits of his mind that still sometimes wonder whether the word was good enough or not, whether it could encompass how he felt towards boys and girls and _people_ \- and he didn’t know, he didn’t have a clue of what was true in the world. It didn’t make sense to him a lot of the time, and he couldn’t make the world see what was true in his own mind, and sometimes he felt like words were nothing but a burden to him.

But that was then, and now was different, and some time along the way he had decided that he might just be okay without declaring a word to have to fit himself. That was alright, wasn’t it? He was still true to himself.

It felt scary to be without a label, but he had learned that some things bruise and change for the worse when you fit them to a few letters. And this one thing, his sexuality, he didn’t- he didn’t want this, for that. He’d been bruised and shattered enough by it in the past. Now that he was at a place where, within himself, he truly was okay with it – he didn’t dare to fuck that up by using something as fragile as a word.

Dan had thought back on the past few years – after that time he doesn’t like to think about much, where he had been too frightened to live this part in any way in public. But after – after some slow and steady progress, he had arrived where he is today. And it’s easier, isn’t it? He makes videos in which he references attraction to men and women. He talks to his viewers about this crush, and then the other, and about muscles and queer things and good shows and people he looks up to. He’s true to himself, isn’t it?

And he talks about his mental health now and actively, wonderingly, managed to make a really perfect video in which is words hadn’t destroyed and had actually captured the real thing- he had done that, hadn’t he? His depression was something he had learned to grasp.

And there’s his fashion and his passions and just loads of things, he supposes-

He just wonders whether it’s enough, whether it’ll ever be enough. Whether it can be, when there’s still other parts. When there’s things like Phil and who they are to each other and yes, they show their real selves more, don’t they, but they don’t talk about it – do they need to? Will Dan never be happy if they don’t? And what more can he share, what more doesn’t he even know about himself yet, and he thinks and he thinks and he thinks.

And then he stops, because Phil is here, and at least Dan knows about the things that make him happy now, at least a bit, and sometimes that pulls him out of his head enough for just a moment.

~~

The thing is, it’s been forever.

And he had promised them a video, hadn’t he? He had said, because he is stupid like that – although he isn’t supposed to think that. But he had said that he will post a video soon, and they’re waiting now and it’s been since bloody _January,_ and the meme one doesn’t even really count.

So- it doesn’t make fully sense yet, not completely in the way that he can already trust the words he’ll use. Not like it did with his depression video.

But he’s got some sort of feeling about it, and he really likes the idea, and he really wants to make this video. So he’ll do it now, and it’ll be alright.

He wants to show people a little bit of himself. He wants to be open and share what he’s felt and he hopes, hopes so much, that they get him.

It’s not perfect, in the end. It doesn’t feel as complete and as final as he hoped it would.

But it fits the triangle he supposes. It’s important, because it is a message that people need to hear, Dan thinks. It’s personal, because he talks about himself figuring this stuff out, doesn’t he? And that’s all the video is about anyway, to be true to himself, that’s what he’s trying to do- So, yeah. And then it’s entertaining, too. He trusts that part the most. Because he likes the skits and he filmed them with Phil and they are always good.

So, he uploads it. And that is that.

~~

As a child and a teenager, Dan’s most important thing had been to make sense of the world around him.

He’s made sense of it a little bit and found peace with the fact that he doesn’t get it completely. That’s… okay, in a way.

Now, what he worries about is the sense that the world gets from him.

 _Happiness can be found when you are your true self_ , he thinks, like he does so often, and he wants to show the world desperately that part of it that he thinks he understands.

But in the end, it all fails at the words again.

He doesn’t seem to have made himself clear enough. There’s a joke that he hadn’t intended on to be so prominent, and there’s a bunch of people seemingly clinging to that. It’s people who maybe don’t understand what deeper meaning he’d tried to talk about.

“Look at this one,” he tells Phil and shows him his phone, and they laugh about it, it’s funny, it really is a funny joke.

But something underneath aches, and he’s grateful for all the comments that are about something- something more than that, something that Dan can’t particularly name as well, but that _feels_ right to him.

And then he does a liveshow, and explains some, but again the words don’t capture where his heart had been and their meaning shifts as they leave his tongue. It’s wrong and it’s ill-fitting and he hates it, he hates it desperately.

And so do the fans, don’t they? They hate desperately what they make of what he said, and a part of him wants to scream out his truth, scream about how they just misunderstood, how that really wasn’t what he wanted to say.

But another part doesn’t trust his words that much. Words miss the point he tries to make too often.

What helps in the end is this:

A Phil by his side, that knows what he feels by a broken-up noise and a tilt of his eyebrows. A gaze he directs to the camera after a joke, uncommented. It helps to ache, a bit and then a lot and then a bit less again.

Dan lays on the futon and his hands dangle by his side. His hair is greasy and his mouth is dry and it’s a bit of a shit day, really. He’s been in his head all day long and yearns for silence. For some more quiet, something a bit mellower and wonderful.

It appears by his side in the form of his partner in life.

“Dan,” Phil soothes, and the hand he cards through his strands feels nice. Somewhere distantly Dan remembers he could be grossed out, but the bigger part of his mind takes the touch as a pain killer and quiets.

Phil guides him upright with a gentle hand, and he says something maybe, and perhapsDan reacts, but he can’t be too sure. He lets himself be taken and pulled and goes easily, because where Phil goes, Dan follows.

They shower together and they don’t talk. They bring each other off and Dan’s skin bristles with energy again. It feels pleasant. Phil’s gentle with him and Dan pushes a whimper to his neck when he comes.

Later they sit on the couch, and Dan’s mind feels hungover from all the thinking he did today. He refrains from judging the thinking right now, because maybe it wasn’t just as fruitless as he wants to believe right now. So he doesn’t think that, and he’s proud of himself for it.

His toes are warm and covered up by the fluffy blanket. His stomach is full. The words he exchanges with Phil go easy and feel right. They seem more like an added sensation to the rest of their communication, and that is nice, he supposes.

“You can’t make everyone happy,” Phil tells him. There’s a fierce quality hidden in the layers of his voice and Dan feels cared for.

He shakes his head a bit.

“I know. It’s just- I am disappointed that I missed the point.”

Phil, to his credit, doesn’t comment on how he’d told Dan to wait more for this video. How he’d suggested one of his other ideas first. Phil doesn’t say that, and Dan rolls his eyes playfully at him to show his gratitude.

They don’t talk more about it then, not for now. And Dan, to his own amazement, doesn’t keep dwelling on it.

When he goes to the kitchen to do their dishes there’s a song in his head and he hums it, and sways his hips, and sings then. It’s a moment or two before he’s properly giving a show to the dirty plates in their dish washer. He’s dancing and jumping and singing on top of his lungs. His eyes are closed and miraculously he doesn’t break anything as he stumbles around in the dark.

He feels ablaze with life.

The feeling inside of him is glimmering and shimmering. It’s quiet maybe, but it’s something life has to offer for Dan, and he acknowledges it for whatever the fuck it may be. It’s here now, and it’s nice, and for right now, Dan won’t use thoughts or words to make it shy away.

At the end of his performance, he opens his eyes. Phil’s standing in the doorway, a quiet smile playing around his mouth.

Dan smiles back.

The feeling persists.

**Author's Note:**

> I am a bit insecure about how I wrote this fic and it's a bit ironic, because isn't it exactly about how words don't ever completely live up to what goes on in our own minds? I hope you enjoyed it, despite it being so heavy on introspection and messy thoughts. I'd love for you to let me know what you thought and I am always welcoming ConCrit!
> 
> I very much recommend listening to the song that inspired this fic, it's beautiful and carries so much of the feeling I had when I wrote this. [clicky click](https://we-are-inimitable.tumblr.com/post/171667264425/stiller-quieter-wir-sind-helden)
> 
> [tumblr link](https://heartfeltfangirl.tumblr.com/post/171668356468/missing-words)


End file.
